Chinese Toddler Who Was Run Over Twice Dies

BEIJING — A toddler who stirred a national debate on compassion after being run over twice by vans and left lying in a market street in southern China has died a week after the incident, hospital officials in Guangzhou said on Friday.

The two-year-old girl, Wang Yueyue, died early Friday morning of brain and organ failure, the head of the intensive care unit at Guangzhou Military District General Hospital, Su Lei, told news services.

A wrenching surveillance camera video showed the girl being struck by a van and lying in the street, ignored or unnoticed by 18 cyclists and other passers-by even after a second van struck her. A rag collector eventually came to her aid.

The video of the incident spread rapidly on China's microblogs, prompting hundreds of thousands of posts on whether China had lost its morality and sense of compassion in its rush to modernity. Word of the child's death sparked a fresh round of microblog posts on Friday. Both drivers were later detained, but it was unclear what charges they might face, The Associated Press reported.

A version of this brief appears in print on October 22, 2011, on page A5 of the New York edition with the headline: China: Girl Whose Hit-and-Run Stirred National Debate Dies at Age 2. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe